Joel Klatt gives blunt explanation of why Notre Dame will struggle vs. Ohio State defense

Ahead of the College Football Playoff National Championship Game between Notre Dame and Ohio State, Joel Klatt stated his belief that the Fighting Irish’s offense will struggle with the Buckeyes’ defense on Monday.

During the latest episode of The Joel Klatt Show, the FOX Sports analyst elaborated on his opinion, claiming that Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard is going to have to play his best game of the season for the Fighting Irish to stand tall at the end of the showdown with Ohio State. Easier said than done, for sure.

“Now when Notre Dame has the ball and Ohio State is defending — I already said this, I don’t have a ton of faith that Notre Dame is going to score a lot of points in this game,” Klatt stated. “Ohio State’s defense is the best defense that this team will have faced. They are good everywhere. They’ve been excellent at defensive tackle and defensive line. They’ve been excellent at defensive end creating pressure. They’ve been excellent at linebacker. … They are elite at the safety position. They’ve been very good at the corner position and have depth there. … They’ve got depth. So it’s like, what do you do against Ohio State There’s not a ton you can do.

“The first thing that Notre Dame is going to have to do is find a way — to be honest, I don’t understand or quite know how they’re going to do this, find a way to have first down success. I think that that has to be in two ways. Running your quarterback, which equates the numbers and maybe creates a physical matchup where you can gain four or five yards. Or throwing — the RPO pass-game, which looks just like the run for the quarterback. But then you can maybe get behind the safety with a little bit of a slant. You can get a flare on the outside and you can equate numbers with the read of the quarterback post-snap.

“Riley Leonard is going to have to play the game of his life, both running and potentially throwing the football. I think he’s going to have to run the ball 15 to 20 times. I really do. I think that he’s going to have to be so efficient in the RPO pass game that it’s going to take Ohio State out of what they want to do.”

While Riley Leonard has been dang good throughout the College Football Playoff thus far, Joel Klatt and a myriad of other analysts are right to have some pause, due to the sheer ferocity of the Ohio State defense.

Time will tell if the quarterback can rise above and lead Notre Dame to a win, but the money is on the Buckeyes for a reason at the moment.